OPINION: Beating up Babu Jaan

Last Updated on Sunday, 17 March 2024, 19:57 by Denis Chabrol

By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus

Stabroek News editorial on Babu Jaan (3/17/2024) offers a perfect opportunity for us to dig down into the intellectual and political preferences, as well as the cultural foundations of the Guyanese urban elites. Although the editorial appears to be the work of a junior writer, the core values, perspectives, and yes, the biases of the said elite, are clearly visible. I contend that Stabroek News is the premier outlet of this elite.

Let us start with the political dimensions of things. In this regard, SN is no different from Kaieteur News’ attack playbook whereby the General Secretary of the PPP, Bharrat Jagdeo, is singled out for criticism. The editorial characterizes Jagdeo’s speech as a “tirade.” Why is it a tirade to point to the constant attempts by the PNCR to mobilize along the lines of race? And further, why is it a “tirade” to expose the fact that senior PNCR operatives openly, unremittingly, and without apologies, claim that their constituency is solely Afro-Guyanese?

The editorial plays dirty politics when it belittles Jagdeo’s exhortation to take pride in the composition of the audience/participants, one that was visibly and demonstrably multiracial. Here is how SN spins the PPP’s drive to multiracialism and multiculturalism – “This is a version of an assertion which both parties like to make, namely, that they are multiracial in terms of their composition. Both have some members from other races it is true, but neither is multiracial in any meaningful sense. Furthermore, whatever the composition of the audience at Babu Jaan – and it was still largely, but not exclusively Indian – that is not evidence of a multiracial party. The racial constituencies have not changed fundamentally as yet” (Ibid).

Readers should know that this is how effective propaganda works. The technique is to transform fundamentally different histories and contemporary developments into simple differences, so that, it is difficult to establish clear cut differentiation between the two main political parties in Guyana. In this case, the editorial asks that you disregard what was clearly visible to the eye, namely, a verifiably multiracial assemblage of participants and substitute it with the old ways of seeing things. SN itself effectively substitutes what can be seen with the naked eye, with its own standpat ideology of racial division.

The truth of the matter, and a truth well known to Stabroek News, is that the PNCR never claims to be multiracial. The PNCR has never and cannot now ask an audience to look around as see the diversity because it won’t be there. On the contrary, the PNCR is always proud to locate its politics in defense of African rights. David Granger’s recent claims expressed through a Village Voice (3/16/2024) interview is the classic PNCR preference for representing its core values. It’s all about Buxton, and only Buxton.

The world also knows that any and all attempts by the PPP to broaden its demographic base is met with cruel criticisms from Afro-nationalists linked to the WPA and PNCR, with a healthy sprinkling of disdain from academic voices mostly in the diaspora. Afro-Guyanese members of the PPP cabinet are called “house-slaves.”. Name-calling, notwithstanding, the PPPC has made notable gains in New Amsterdam, Georgetown, and Linden. SN needs to examine the returns of the 2023 local government elections. And even more than that, the PPPC consolidated and expanded its voting strengths and partnerships across the Amerindian communities.

The editorial does not spare President Ali, who quite rightly alluded to the arrogance of that class of urban intellectuals and cultural care takers who have no respect for those who are from the sugar and rice growing, nor from the hinterland areas of this country. These folks are the ones that pronounce cat with K, as in Kit-Kat. They eat muffins for breakfast at Oasis and ‘do’ lunch at Marriott. Most are on a plane heading overseas, rather than on the Demerara or Berbice Bridge heading to Tuschen or No 67. Town-man talk is high talk. Rural, and especially Indian country creolese, has no place in the Kit-Kat linguistic community.

By contrast, the president is from Leguan and Leonora and he knows by first-hand experience how country people are viewed and treated by the Georgetown Moray House type of intellectuals, the cultural establishment, and their political associates in the PNC.

If you do not believe me, or if you think there is exaggeration, just look at the way the editorial responds to President Ali’s observation that PPP supporters do not necessarily speak the “right type of English” or wear the right clothes. Here is a direct quote from the editorial – “It is difficult to know what to make of this, except that it might suggest a certain insecurity. Fighting for the upliftment of the nation is admirable, but given the complexity of modern society and the difficulties of our social situation sophisticated approaches are not to be dismissed” (Ibid).

This is not only astoundingly arrogant, but it proves exactly the point President Ali made at Babu Jaan, which is that for the urban intellectuals and their associates in the PNCR, country people are not sophisticated enough!

The Stabroek News editorial on Babu Jaan under consideration here is a painful reminder that there is a small, urban based intellectual-cultural elite centered around Georgetown, which until this day believes that some are to destined to be field workers or run salt-goods shops, while others (meaning people like themselves) are the ones sent by Him to conduct the affairs of Government and governance. Stabroek News should review what the ‘sophisticated’ ones did to Guyana between March and August 2020.

Dr. Randy Persaud is Advisor in the Office of the President.